REAFFORESTATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3444, 16 March 1920, Page 43

REAFFORESTATION.

SIR DAVID HTJTCHINS'S REPORT. REPLANTING URGED. (Fbom Ouh Own Coehesponbsht ) WELLINGTON, March 11.. In a report dealing with New Zealand forests, just issued by the Government Printer, Sir David Hutchins states that the forests of this country are still capable of becoming one of its richest national assets —an asset which for all time will yield a big annual return of wealth, lighten the burdens of taxation, lower the cost of living, and support close settlement on. extensive areas that otherwise will bo barren and will carry a sparse population or none at all. . He adds that unless immediate measures are taken to conserve the remaining native forests, and work them as forests are worked with an enormous annual profit in Europe, and in many other parts of the world, the opportunity of preserving them as a wealth-producing national estate will speedily disappear. We are, according to this report, threatened with the final loss of the finest forests in the southern hemisphere, if our present policy is persisted hi. Sir David is an expert, and he adds that with the loss of the forests the bt-st industry that New Zealand has ever possessed, or is ever likely to possess, and the handicapping of two or three other industries in depriving them of their raw material at economical rates will disappear, and will mean a continued rise in the present high cost of living. Sir David's investigations lead him to the con-j elusion that our forest trees grow about twice as fast as the chief forest trees of Europe. He remarks that the Puhi Puhi kauri forest, which was destroyed by fire years ago, occupied a space of 17,000 acres, an area less than that of Wellington harbour from the sea to Somes Island. This single forest, he observed, if it had been preserved and fully stocked with young kauri, would now have been worth an amount that would coyer" the cost of rebuilding Greater Wellington, from the bare ground, " with better" graded streets, and the boulevards its peerless site merits.". This expert adviser is of opinion not only that th. 3 native forests can be preserved, but that under cultivation, as it is understood in Europe and elsewhere, they can be made immensely more productive than they ever were in their virgin state. The cultivated kauri forest, it is estimated, will" produce eight times as much timber on a, given area in a given time as the wild forest. He estimates, that half a million acres of kauri, an area that might yet be restored, would ultimately return a net amount of more tlian £lO per acre per annum, or over £5.000,000 per annum in the aggregate to the State. With the totara forests that are still in existence there are great possibilities if demarcation on approved lines is undertaken. -In this country only poor land (much of it mountain, country or of little value for ordinary settlement) will be retained or set aside as forest. Sir David Hutchins estimates, however, that cultivated forest on this poor land, the bulk of it included in the ''unoccupied third" of the dominion, would ultimately support on the soil and 'in sawmills about as many peoplo (Workers and their families) as now constitute the total population of the dominion. Such forest estates, he declares, would be amongst the most valuable in the world; they would easily surpass the most valuable forests in France and Germany, and they can be put in order usually for a fraction of the -value of the timber on them, or at the worst, for the cost of grassing. He makes it clear that the dominion in the oast has pursued a ruinous policy of forest alienation. without demarcation. The alienation of further •good forests, on poor or steep mountain land, he concludes, should be arrested without delay, and forest demarcation put in hand to finally seperate the land best suited for forestry from that best suited for iaxming. To do the demarcation, and to work the forest estates as soon as they are formed, there should be a technical nonpolitical Forest Department on the lines of the American Forest Service.